


The Down Side of Me

by AeschylusRex



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Drabbles with a plot, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Post Chosen, dealing with the aftermath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2018-09-01 23:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8642578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeschylusRex/pseuds/AeschylusRex
Summary: She sleeps with you because you’re wrong for her.





	1. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 11.24.16
> 
> So, this is just a writing exercise that I decided to post. I don't have too much to say about it, except that I love love love the antagonistic relationship between Buffy and Faith. Tons of good chemistry there! 
> 
> Enjoy~

**i.**

She sleeps with you because you’re wrong for her.

She comes to you in the dark, with hazy eyes and dirty clothes, and she wets her lips with the tip of her tongue, like she’s begging you not to make her say it, but you always do. That’s your price.

“Fess up, B,” you say to her, the first time. “Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

You refuse to play her games. This is personal. You’ll take a lot of shit for it, so you need to hear her beg. You need an alibi when the others come knocking, because they will. They’ll find out eventually. They keep such a close eye on her after all. You’re fine not to dwell on it, if you can, but no one will let you forget. That would be too kind. The world has never been kind to you like that.

Angel knocks first.

“You’re wrong for her.”

You throw your cigarette butt at him and turn away. “Jesus. Thanks, asshole. Fuckin’ hello to you, too.”

Angel slides out of the shadows and follows you as you stomp through the graveyard. He’s scowling harder than usual. He looks like like he’s about two seconds away from vamping out, like he’s just waiting for you to say the wrong thing so he can throw the first punch, but you don’t want to talk, and you don’t want to fight. You want everyone to leave you in fucking peace.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re gonna get burned. Both of you.”

“Wow, you’re persistent tonight.” You grit your teeth and sidestep a crooked headstone.

“I’m gonna follow you until you listen to me, Faith.”

“I am listening, unfortunately. You get real whiney when you’re jealous. It’s pretty hard to tune out.”

Angel snarls and you roll your eyes. God, what a drama queen.

“Faith-“

You whirl on him and he stops short. You’ve got your best fuck-shit-up face on, and you’re not above throwing a few sucker punches to get your point across. “Listen, I didn’t ask for your opinions about my sex life, big boy! So fuck right off before I break your nose!”

This time Angel does vamp out, and you bare your teeth right back.

“She’s not just another notch, Faith! She’s Buffy!”

“Oh my god, it happened one time, okay? We were drunk! It seemed like a good idea at the time!” You shove him back, and turn on you heels, eager to get far, far away from this conversation. “Fucking let it go already!”

“You’re lying!”

Your skin prickles. “Prove it!”

“I can smell her all over you!”

“That doesn’t prove shit!”

“Faith!”

You ignore him this time, just keep walking, keep your heels pounding into the grass. You think for a second that maybe he finally gave up, until he tackles you into the side of a mausoleum. And okay. Now you’re _really_ mad.

“Angel, I swear to fucking jesus-“

“-She’s all over you. I can…” he grits his teeth, and his eyes are yellow slits. “God, Faith, I can _smell_ her.”

“Yeah?” Your chin juts out, and you’re not pulling any punches tonight. “Bet it drives you crazy.”

“What’s this, the fifth time?”

You shove him back, scowling. “Fuck, you’re gross.”

“She doesn’t love you.”

“Who said anything about love, old man?” You try to slip away, but his arm shoots out and pins you against the concrete wall.

Angel takes a deep breath and lets his vampire features fade away. “She’s using you to forget.”

“And?”

“She did the same thing to Spike.”

You shake your head, eyes locked with his, like you’re waiting for him to start making some kind of sense. “ _And_?”

He steps back, actually fucking releases you, finally, and just gives you this look. Like you’re a fucking idiot. Like you’re some petulant little kid. You scowl back at him because he has no actual right. You’re not the one tailing people through cemeteries.

“And you’re okay with this? You’re okay being compared to _Spike_?”

“Oh, my fucking god. I don’t have time for this.”

You stomp off again through the rows of headstones, and god help the next vampire your see, because you’re gonna tear that fucker a new asshole. You rip your cigarette carton back out of your jacket pocket, scoffing at yourself for thinking you’d be able to limit yourself to one. You’ll be out by the end of patrol at this rate. You hear footsteps behind you, but you don’t turn. You’re too angry to speak. You just let Angel follow you for a bit while you smoke.

Over the next hill you find a fresh grave, and smile viciously as you jam your cigarette into the eye socket of a vampire in a linen suit. You dust him like a fucking professional and wipe your hands on your jeans. After that, you’re back on the street, itching under your collar again.

“Why?” Angel asks, sidling up to you. “Why are you okay with this?”

Your boots scuff against the sidewalk. Your thumbs tap against the front of your leather coat, hands shoved deep in the pockets. The streetlight ahead changes from green to red.

“Because I already knew.”

“What she’s doing?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty frickin’ obvious, Mr. I-Am-Very-Smart.”

Angel kicks a bit of glass and watches it skitter across the pavement. “Great,” he says, bitterly. “Nothing like voluntary self-destruction.”

“Oh, fuck you.” You roll your eyes, again. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

“You should have some self-respect.”

“You should get a hobby. Besides stalking.”

“I’m a vampire. I stalk.”

“Fuckin’ break the mold, then.”

“Faith,” he jumps out in front of you, blocking your path. “What’s happening with you two is bad, okay? It’s bad mojo.”

You sneer at him. “You would know, wouldn’t you, Angelus?”

His earnest concern hardens into a cutting glare. “Aren’t you even the least bit curious why I’m following you?”

“Not even a little bit.”

He pokes you in the chest. “I found Buffy crying in the kitchen.”

“Poor Buffy.” You shoulder him out of the way and continue walking. “Good thing she has you to cheer her up.”

“She had bruises around her neck.”

“She should.” You snort. “She asked me to choke her.”

Angel flanks you again, leaning into your space. “She looked like she’d been raped.”

“Yeah, I think that’s the aesthetic she was goin’ for.”

“Faith!”

“Oh, my god, Angel!” You elbow him into the street. “Give it fuckin’ a rest! Why are you even surprised at this point? She fucked Spike through a fuckin’ building! She’s a freak! She’s allowed to be a freak without you and all the Scoobies constantly prying into her business!”

“She’s hurting!”

“Gosh, maybe because Sunnydale’s a crater and her mom’s dead and her friends are assholes who kicked her out of her own house while she was trying to save the world!”

He glowers at you, but you just snort.

Like you give a flying fuck. Jesus, what is this, the Spanish Inquisition? Fuck.

“You’re wrong for her.”

“You said that already.”

“I’m serious. You’re not what she needs right now.”

“Yeah?” You scowl at him, and you’re seriously about 3 seconds away from actually breaking his goddamn nose. “Well, then how about you go convince Buffy of that and leave me the fuck alone! I’m not the one who keeps draggin’ her into dark corners, okay?”

His shoulders slump then, and you laugh at him, because you realize right away what that means. He tried. He tried and she didn’t listen, and you know that look because you tried too, and she didn’t listen to you either. That would be too kind, and the world has never been kind to you like that.

She sleeps with you because you’re wrong for her. She won’t let you forget it.

 

V v v v v V


	2. Buffy

**ii.**

You sleep with Faith because she’s wrong for you.

You sleep with her because she smells like leather and she lives for the dark.

You sleep with her because she’ll guzzle tequila with the best of them and smoke five cigarettes without blinking, but, most of all, because she doesn’t ask questions, and she doesn’t stay the night.

Xander won’t stop frowning at you, Willow won’t stop trying to hug you, Angel’s having a conniption fit, and all of them are so busy trying to “be your friend” that they don’t bother to ask what you have to say about it. Which is…well, nothing, except butt out.

Everybody can just butt out.

Everybody except Faith, who doesn’t seem to care, who doesn’t want the scythe and doesn’t for a second want to be top dog.

“Yo, I thought I did for a minute,” she says, cool and cavalier, rolling her shoulders like she’s barely given it any consideration until now. “I thought it’d be cool to be you, but then, nah. I was just a stupid kid with unresolved daddy issues and a shit attitude.” She tips her beer at you. “No offense, B, but fuck that shit.”

You’d rag on her for her vulgar language, but you don’t care anymore. Faith has a lot of wisdom to share, actually. She always cuts through the bullshit, always manages to the get to the heart of the issue, to make the most tangled, most overblown, most complicated issues in your head, seem simple. It bothered you a lot more in high school, when her reductionistic philosophy made your problems seem too petty, when her platitudes cut too close to the bone. She had a knack for stating the truth, and she was right about a lot of things. Still is. She gets you better than the others, and sure, sometimes she doesn’t get you at all. Sometimes the two of you are standing on completely different planets, but she understands what it means to be slayer, and she understands what it means to be alone with that responsibility.

None of the baby slayers will ever carry that burden. You wish you were more excited to be giving them a better life. Instead, you’re just envious.

God, when will all of this be over? Can you please just retire to Bermuda now?

Where is the white picket fence you’d always dreamed of? Where is the hunky boyfriend with the red sports car and the floppy brown hair? Where is the Angel you fell in love with? Two and three nights a week you’re tumbling into bed with Faith, drunk and dirty, growling at her to tear your clothes, to pull your hair, to choke you until you forget your own name. Faith is the eraser. Faith takes everything you give. She drains you dry, until you’re too exhausted to worry, to care, to obsess over the perfect life you gave up when you decided to save the world.

Mind eraser. No chaser.

You have to keep telling yourself this won’t end well. You have to remind yourself how things ended up with Spike, with blood and tears and deep wounds that will never heal, but Faith has these eyes that Spike never had. These dark, expressive eyes you can peer into like windows. Faith isn’t as simple as everyone thinks. There’s a whole universe in there, and, as she taps her fingers against the bar, looking you over like a predator, you’re 110% ready to jump in. Yes, what you’re doing is reckless. Yes, it could be a black hole (Angel won’t shut up about all the reasons this is a bad idea), but these days you like the dark a lot more than you used to. What’s the worst that could happen? You die?

You snicker at your own joke.

The worst and more has already happened. You’ve had the hellish privilege of watching young girls die on your orders, and there is nothing worse than that.

God, it still makes you sick.

“B,” Faith motions to the bartender. “I’m getting us more shots.”

“Please.” Your voice is so, so hoarse. You have no idea why. “Tequila.”

She scoffs. “Fucking duh.”

The bartender approaches and Faith places her order. Six shots for the two of you. If she plans on splitting that total evenly you’ll be fucked up in a matter of minutes. Your mouth actually waters at the thought. Oh, how the holy have fallen.

The bartender pours them right in front of you, all six. Faith slides you two, and you take a third. She just smirks. Her eyes are sparkling in that way they do around you, around only you, like she’s proud, and hungry, and happy.

“Faith.”

“Yeah, B?”

“Do I make you happy?”

“Sure.”

You throw back a shot and laugh, like this is so funny. Everything is a joke.

“Super.”

Faith smirks and kills all of her shots like water. Her eyes wander to the TV in the corner, broadcasting the Clippers game in HD. She likes sports, apparently, the only one in the whole group so far, except maybe Kennedy, who gets a bit rabid about the New York somebody-or-others. Some football team. You don’t really care. You watch the game together for a while, but you don’t ask Faith to explain the rules this time. You’ve been coming here so often that you’re starting to understand the difference between a technical and flagrant.

“Bullshit,” Faith mutters, eyes narrowing at the bulky referee running onto the court.  

You glance at her out of the corner of your eye, but you have to turn a little now because you’re good and drunk. Your eyes are bleary.

“Faith…”

You lean in closer, you let your fingers curl inside her elbow. Your lips hover inches from her prone ear. Her muscles tense under your grip. This is how it starts.

“Yeah, B?”

You hear the breathless note. You hear the quiet intake after your nickname. It’s not just you, here, stuck in this quagmire, and that’s such a comfort. That’s what the others don’t see, and you don’t want them to know, how much the two of you feed off each other. How much this was inevitable.

“Take me somewhere,” you whisper, and you don’t make it sweet. You don’t make it syrupy. You make it dark. You make it heavy and sultry, like heavy furs and cloying perfume, like fresh sweat in a dim, stuffy bar.

Faith shivers. “One more round?”

“Yeah.”

She holds up four more fingers, slides you two more shots. You sink them with practiced ease. No more sputtering and hand waving. You’ve tasted death. What’s a little tequila? _Nothing_ is what. These days you could drink tequila in your sleep. Hard Buffy. This is what hard Buffy looks like.

The room tips when you get up and Faith steadies you. Her tolerance is higher. She’s always a little more aware by the time you get back. The neon sign flickers over the door, and the air outside is warm. Flies and mosquitos buzz through the streetlight. You waver on your feet and a couple smokers look over with interest.

Faith lights up a cigarette. “You want?”

“No thanks.” You always decline.

“One day you’ll change your mind.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You changed your mind about me, didn’t ya?”

Faith grins and takes your arm. You admire her optimism. You admire her devil may care attitude. She says everything’s alright, and only the alcohol, the cigarettes, the loose dancing, belie her promises. It’s convincing, at a glance. You’re hardly convincing from outer space. You lean into her and let her steer. She’ll take you somewhere and lay you down, and you’ll tell her to make it rough. You’ll beg her to take you, to strip you of your authority. Anything to give up that iron clad control. It’s the same dance every week. You’ll offer up your agency, your guilt, the crushing burden on your shoulders. Just for a minute. You’ll let her bear it, you’ll let her bear down. You’ll let her fuck you like you’re nobody, like you’re nothing.

“Wait here,” she murmurs, into your ear, somewhere, in some faceless parking lot. “I gotta go pay.”

She’s gone for a minute, but it feels like an eternity. You want to touch her. Your body thrums like an engine. When she returns, you kiss her outside the motel room, against the faded, red door, with the smell of stale cigarettes lingering around the flower boxes, and the acrid taste of fresh smoke lingering on her lips. Your hips shift and grind against hers. Your fingers curl into her hair. She gets the knob to turn, somehow, and you stumble in together, greasy and grimy from patrol. The air conditioner rattles and the walls are thin. The sheets are scratchy as she throws you down. You can hear your pants tearing as she fumbles with the waistband. It’s such an incredible turn on, her violence. You want her to break you. You almost ask, but you don’t have to. Her lips are back on yours in a second, suffocating.

You choke into her mouth, and she swallows it down.

Her fingers grasp and everything hurts.

Your body sings.

You sleep with Faith because she’s wrong for you. Something this good isn’t meant to be right.

 V v v v v V


	3. Buffy

**iii.**

Los Angeles twinkles at night. The colors run and bleed, and the lights… you can’t track them quite like you should. The streetlights have blurry halos, bright trails that streak across your vision when you turn your head. Everything you see is a long exposure shot left out of focus, the city around you filtered down to basic hues and shapes of indiscernible purpose. Your eyes water because you haven’t blinked in so long. You’re a child again, in awe. This is how it was before you learned. Breathtaking.

You could stay here forever in this haze, spinning with the world beneath you, smiling at electric contrails. Everything feels amazing, and yeah, you’re reeling, but you’re not dealing with that. You’re taking a break from dealing. Happily vacationing in the land of not coping. Instead you walk, and walk, and walk. You might be going in circles. You might be on the outskirts of town. You might be nowhere. It doesn’t matter. You’ll go back when you’re ready to go back, and that isn’t your priority at the moment, so…

One foot in front of the other.

Heel, toe. Heel, toe.

Seconds. Minutes. Hours.

You’re still floating in the wind when a pair of headlights blind you. A car door slams, but it’s distant. It’s way too far away to concern yourself with, leaning up against against some chain link fence, trying to remember where you’re coming from, where you’re going to.

You hear their voices before you see them.

“Over there. Against the fence.”

“Is she okay?”

“She looks okay.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything. She could be poisoned or cursed or-“

“-Buffy!” A large body hovers in front of you. “Buffy! Hey!”

You shake your head. Are you supposed to respond? Because you didn’t sign up for this. You’re tired. You’re ragged. You’re slurring your speech.

“Buffy’s not here right now…” you suck in a breath, “please leave a message after the beep.”

“I think she’s just drunk.”

You nod your head, because _bingo_ , and finger-gun them. “I made it to third base with a bottle of vodka. Congratulate me.”

“How many fingers, Buff?”

The hand in front of you wavers in and out of focus, and you’re as sharp as a dull, rusty, knife, so you just mumble out the first number that comes to mind.

“What? _17_?” The hand recedes. “I only have five fingers on this hand. 10 max.”

You frown. “So, grow some more or somethin’, I don’ care.” You reach out and lose your balance a bit. Your palm smacks against some hard surface. Maybe a wall. Maybe a tree. Maybe a…person’s chest.

You squint, and sniff rather indelicately.

“Buff? Buffy?” Large hands grip your wrists. “Where’s Faith?”

“I dunno and I dun care.”

“Was she with you before?”

“What’s before?” You slump and someone catches you. “I’m gonna…gonna…” You’re gonna be sick. “Shit.”

You drop to your knees and puke onto the cement.

Ugh. Gross.

Hands rub your back and you choke. You vomit again. Everything spills out in a torrent, splattering a bit on your hands, and you feel empty, like you’ve just lost some part of yourself on this crumbling sidewalk. Your eyes sting. There are hands in your hair. You don’t recognized these people, but they feel okay. They feel safe. There’s something familiar about the way they lift you up, calling your name, wiping your mouth on on some soft material. Cotton? They’re talking about you, maybe, but their voices are nothing, just echoes in a cavern, warped, faded, indistinguishable. You blink out at the city, but it’s so dark now. The lights are gone.

You have no idea where you are.

You let the lights carry you, and they dumped you here, in this darkness. Maybe you’ve wandered too far in this urban wilderness. Maybe you’ve finally lost your way. Maybe it’s time to come clean with the wild feelings in your heart, the black tendrils clawing up from murky depths. If you didn’t shove them back down this time, what would happen? Is possible to be eaten from the inside out? Would they consume you?

Will you ever be curious enough to find out?

A voice calls to you and you lean into it, like a moth circling a lantern. The sound is a comfort. The sound is so soothing in this dark, dark haze. The bodies close in around you, stalwart soldiers to keep you safe. With strong, gentle movements, they load you into a vehicle, and then you’re in the backseat with your head in someone’s lap, your cheek chaffing against denim, fingers combing back your tangled hair. Quiet words caress your ear.

“It’s gonna be okay, Buff. You’re gonna be okay.”

It sounds so good, you decide to believe it.

The car rocks, and you rock with it. They ask you about Faith again, but you don’t know what they mean. You looked for her, before the vodka. You searched the city for hours, pacing from one hiding spot to the next, but you didn’t find her. You called her phone and she didn’t answer. It’s not surprising that she’s disappeared, but you’d hoped maybe she’d give a bit of warning this time. Her room was empty and her stuff was gone. No note. Only the cigarette butts moldering in an ashtray by the window.

Four weeks of aimless fucking earns you this.

And god…

You’re such an idiot.

Hot tears soak into the denim beneath your cheek. Quiet words wash over you like a gentle tide. Fingernails scratch along your scalp. You want more vodka. You want to sleep. You want oblivion and darkness and the comforts of nonexistence. They could’ve let you float in heaven for the rest of eternity. Instead you’re here, in this hell, with your loved ones and your misery, crying over another inevitable outcome. You don’t want to care about anything ever again. Not like this.

“I couldn’t find her,” you slur. “I looked an’ I…couldn’t.”

Someone shushes you softly, the owner of the jeans you’re crying into. “It’s okay, Buffy. We’ll talk about it later.”

“There won’t…won’t be a later.”

“Of course there will.”

“No. It’s over.”

Soft lip press against your temple and your squeeze your eyes shut.

The rest of ride home passes in eerie silence.

You pass out long before you get there.

You don’t dream, but you see her face in the early morning hours, awake again on the bathroom floor. Dawn’s asleep in your bed just outside the door, snoring gently. Your fingers twist into the hem of your shirt. Your teeth twist into your bottom lip. It’s the only way you can sob this quietly.

It’s impossible to say where the moisture’s coming from, because you’ve drunk enough clear liquor to kill an Orange County housewife. Your throat is dryer than Death Valley on the 4th of July. You’ve puked out everything you consumed and more. The rest is pouring from your eyes, leaking into your ears, trickling into your hair. She’s gone, and it… god, it actually hurts.

You can’t believe it.

All this time. All this hate. You cared, didn’t you? Because love is just one side of the coin away from hate, and she was your sister slayer. When she flipped teams, you felt personally responsible. None of the others ever carried that guilt like you did, masked behind an icy veneer of indignant rage. Faith was the perfect target for your misdirected self-loathing, and okay, yes, you’ve always been something of a ditzy blonde, but you’re not an idiot. You should’ve known better. You’ve should’ve seen the writing on the wall. Faith was never really the enemy. She just made it so easy.

She just made it so hard.

You roll over onto your side and curl into yourself, rocking on cold tile. The bathroom is dark and damp. Your cotton shirt is stuck to your back. Someone stripped off your jeans, and you’re down to your socks and your underwear, shivering, gritting your teeth against the storm. It’s too late, but you’re still fighting. You always fight. It’s the only reason you haven’t blown away already. You’ve been telling yourself you’re okay for so long that you half believed it when you got to L.A., repeating it like a mantra to everyone who asked, to everyone but Faith, who never asked.

She just knew.

You close your eyes because you still remember. It plays like a loop in your head, the first time. You can _see_ her, _hear_ her, _smell_ her. You’re back there in a second, watching her wink at you over the rim of her whiskey glass in a bar that reeks of stale smoke

“I’m a liar, B.” Her lips curl at the edges. “I know liars when I see ‘em.”

God.

You shudder violently on the tile floor, and it all comes back to you in a torrent.

The dark alley in the back. The stench of trash and gasoline. The smell of Old Spice and cigarette smoke curling into your nostrils, the fingers curling into your hip.

Her voice.

“I can’t read your mind, B.”

You’re leaning against her, hands sliding past the lapels of her superfluous leather coat. She doesn’t need it. It’s late spring and the air is balmy.

“Can’t you?”

“I can’t.” She smirks at the frown on your face. “You seem disappointed.”

“I thought maybe you of all people would get it.”

Her laugh tickles your spine. “You callin’ me a slut?”

“I’m calling you honest.”

“Oh, it’s honest now, huh? That’s a new one.” Faith leans back against the fence and smiles up at the stars. “Faith’s not loose, she’s just honest.”

“I’m not in the mood for your crap.”

She releases your hip. “You’re never in the mood for anything.”

“Damnit, Faith!” You stamp your boot like a petulant child, but god, you miss her touch.

“Fess up, Buffy.” She turns to look at you directly, and her intensity, the unexpected use of your full name, sober you right up. “Tell me what you want me to do. Use your grown up words.”

She leans in further when you hesitate, nearly breathes her next words against your lips, because she does know. She knows and she’s making you pay for it. No more smokescreens. No more cutting words. No more pretenses for you to hide behind. It’s you who followed her out here, and you who backed her up against this fence. It’s you, again.

“Tell me,” she murmurs, crooked smile stark white between pouty red lips, dark eyes trailing down your face. “What do you want?”

You lick your lips and return to the present, back to the cold bathroom floor. Alone. Hungover. Shivering. Your sheets still smell like her, but Dawn wouldn’t know that. Dawn only knows what you show her, the jagged bits that poke up through your skin like fractured bone. You haven’t told her why it matters that Faith is gone. How in the end you only kissed her, swift and hard, because that was easier than uttering your weaknesses out loud. She made you pay for it later, when you were screaming out your blackest requests on the edge of a backbreaking orgasm, but…

You screw your eyes shut and draw the back of a clenched fist across your wet cheeks. Dawn’s heartbeat filters back in through the chaos, grounding you, even breaths that whistle through the tiny cracks in her perfect teeth, the sort of sound only a slayer would notice. You still remember the day it all changed, when you went from ordinary cheerleader to daughter of destiny, when you began to notice things like cracks in teeth and scents that linger on old sheets.

It’s been a parade of bullshit ever since.

And now...

Honestly, your friends are probably right. You could probably use a break from whatever sort of toxic relationship you’ve roped Faith into, but you definitely don’t want it.

Sobriety sucks, and Los Angeles seems a whole lot dimmer when she’s gone.

V v v v v V


	4. Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1.30.17
> 
> Hey kiddos,  
> This one's for dragonsofmyheart ;)  
> ~enjoy <3

iv.

As night falls, you’re drinking alone at a beach bar in Honolulu, wearing your tiniest denim shorts and a black bikini top. You’ve worn fuck all else for weeks. The flannel shirt you came in with is tied in a knot around your waist, and your aviators are pushed up on top of your head, scratched because you dropped them on the pavement trying to get a Cherry Coke out of a stubborn vending machine. The sunburn you got earlier is already healing, will be gone in less than an hour, and you’ve got your feet propped up on the opposite chair, trying to enjoy the last of the picture perfect sunset over the Pacific Ocean.

Sunsets are kinda your thing.

You’re not surprised when she finds you, just surprised it took her so fucking long. After all, magic is an instantaneous art. She could’ve come sooner if she wanted, she could’ve come any time at all, but it speaks volumes that she didn’t. They wanted you out of the way for a while. You were happy to be out of their way. You needed a goddamn vacation from their all whining.

It’s been so fantastically quiet.

You hear her coming before you see her. Her Birkenstocks chafe against the sandy cement beside your table, and you spare her your laziest, most unaffected glance.

“Have a seat, Red.” You kick out the chair for her, and ignore her exasperated stare. “Welcome to paradise.”

She stands there awkwardly for a few seconds looking like she’d rather go back to dudes than share a table with you, but then she sits stiffly and folds her hands in her lap.

“Faith.”

“Willow.”

“You used my full name.” Her lips quirk in imitation of something that looks more like contempt than a smile. “Who are you, and what have you done with Faith?”

You smirk and let your eyes slide away. The sky is still a dark, sapphire blue as the sun’s dying light recedes over the beach. You already can’t wait to ruin the rest of your evening by telling an angry witch to fuck off.

“Hey, welcome to Shark Shack! Can I get you something to drink?” Juan, the server, appears by your table like clockwork, drink tray tucked under his bulky, tattooed arm.

He’s been trying to nail you for weeks now, he’s even memorized all your drinks, but you don’t do the perky types anymore.

Well… Just one.

Willow purses her lips. “Pacifico?”

“You got it! Refill, babe?”

“Just a tequila, J. Salt and lime.”

Juan winks. “You bet. Back a sec.”

He saunters off, and Willow leans back in her chair, arms crossed, steely gaze fixed on you like some kind of fucking death ray. Your jaw tenses. You work it slowly to try and ease the tension creeping into your posture. If she gets to you, she won’t get the fucking satisfaction of knowing it. No fucking way.

“That drink is a little fruity compared to your usual diet of bottom shelf liquor.” Willow’s tone is clipped, like it pains her to be speaking at all.

You glance down at your Mai Tai and shrug. “It’s the beach. I’m trying new shit.”

“How very _Eat, Pray_ , _Love_ of you.”

“Oh, yeah.” Your eyes flare, feigned amusement layered thinly over real irritation. “Just substitute ‘slay’ for ‘pray’ and you’ve got me fuckin' pinned.”

“What about him?” Willow nods her head toward the bar. “Have you slept with him?”

“Who, Juan?”

“Yeah. _Juan_.”

“Nah.” You wave her off. “He can’t afford me.”

“Whatever do you mean? He looks like he at least makes minimum wage.”

“Gosh, I really fucking missed being slut-shamed by a lesbian nun.” You gesture lewdly down your body. “Admit your gay ass wants a piece of this action and get it over with.”

Willow flushes. “I hate you.”

“And yet, here you are. Hating me over drinks.”

“Yeah.” She rolls her eyes. “Here I am.”

Silence descends like an iron curtain between you, and you’ll be fucked if you’re the first one to break it. You’ve got nothing to say to her. She can get bent. You don’t owe her shit.

Juan swings by and deposits your drinks.

Another minute of silence goes by.

“Aren’t you gonna ask _why_ I’m here?” Willow asks, at length.

“No.” You sip from your tequila. “Waste of energy. You’re gonna tell me when you feel like it anyway.”

She tsks and looks away. “You never follow the script.”

“What script? This shit ain’t a movie.”

Willow’s jaw twitches. “Never mind.”

“Whatever.”

“Faith.”

“Willow.”

“Stop it.” Her eyes narrow. “I need to talk to you seriously.”

“So fucking talk already. I ain’t stoppin’ ya.” You throw back your drink, bite into your lime, and signal Juan for another. Your tongue tastes salty, oaky, and sour.

“Fine.”

She places her palms flat on the table, beer still untouched. You half consider reaching over and taking it for yourself, just so it doesn’t go to waste. Old words echo in your ears, images of a white smile flashing behind pink lips, a furtive tongue flicking across sharp teeth.

Want. Take. Have.

“It’s Buffy.”

“No shit. You definitely didn’t zip out here to gossip about boys.”

"Yeah." Willow huffs a laugh that’s drier than California in a drought. “You got me.”

“Besides, everything’s always about Buffy with you and the motherfucking scooby gang.”

“Um yeah. Because we’re her _friends_.”

You scoff. “There’s a difference between friendship and helicopter parenting.”

Willow's eyes flash. “Like you would know what either of those things are from firsthand experience.”

“No thanks to you or yours.”

“In our defense, things would’ve gone a whole lot smoother if you hadn’t made with the stabbing and tried to kill everyone.”

You bristle. “Believe me, if I’d actually wanted any of you weirdos dead, you’d be fucking dead.”

Willow’s fingers tighten around the neck of the bottle. “Oh, as if! You couldn’t even kill Buffy.”

You’re about two seconds for either lunging across the table or throwing up your hands. Do Buffy’s idiot friends really not understand the difference between true hate and repressed sexual tension? Christ, a prison therapist could run circles around all of them.

“Shit, why are we even arguing about this? The issue here is Buffy’s sex life, and your complete inability to _butt_ out of it.”

“ _You’re_ her sex life, Faith! It kind of matters a lot that she’s doing the whole sex life thing with _you_.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean, with _me_?” you snarl at her, leaning across the table. “What the fuck?

“Chill out, okay, it’s not like that, it just-“ Willow cuts herself off and swigs aggressively from her bottle of beer. Liquid spills onto her chin as she swallows and she wipes it away on the back of her sleeve. She’s woefully overdressed for the tropical heat. “You guys were sort of on a warpath. Like all aboard doom-and-gloom express kind of warpath.”

You scoff and turn away because it was nothing like that. Why can’t people just accept that sex happens and move the fuck on? Why does it always have to be a big deal? Juan swings by and drops off another tequila. Willow watches you sullenly lick the salt from the rim, and the lingering citrus from your fingers.

Willow sucks in a breath. “You’re mad.”

“Fuck yes I am. Why are you here?”

“…Well, I- Hm.”

“Be straight with me, or leave.”

“You know I don’t really do straight these days, right?”

Your mouth twists. Fuck, you’re a sucker for bad jokes. “Fuck off, Red.”

Willow smiles and you reflexively smile back, and for a split second it feels like the two of you genuinely understand each other. After all, you’re not really that different. You both got power you couldn’t handle. Both went bad. Both killed some people. Both tried to kill Buffy. She tries to make out like she hates you, but you know better. Willow’s been different since she tapped into her own darkness. She gets it now. She fears you in a completely different kind of way than before. You’re more like mirror, and less like a threat.

Shit, she could squash you like a bug. Just mash you up on the motherfucking pavement. All of you.

“Okay, but see, now I’m actually curious. I skipped town weeks ago, so you all should be fucking thrilled that you finally get your precious golden girl all to yourselves, 100% hate-sex free." You squint at her. "So why the hell are you here?” 

Willow shifts in her seat. Her eyes dart everywhere, but they don’t find yours, and when they finally do, they’re conflicted.

“Because Buffy asked me not to come.” 

A dull pain throbs in your chest. “Surprise.” 

“It’s not what you think.” 

“Yeah? And what is it that I think, Red? Will you please fucking tell me?”

Willow doesn't take your bait. Instead she performs a perfect, deadpan delivery of the sort of fortune cookie psychoanalysis you’d thought only Angel had the gall to yank out of his clenched, antique asshole. 

“You think she doesn’t want you,” she says, all matter of fact, like she hasn’t just proverbially kicked you in the emotional nuts. 

The hair on the back of your neck stands on end. You clench your jaw, and check the vise-like grip on your tequila. Nothing sucks quite as much as removing broken glass from your skin, but you’re getting really fucking keyed up in spite of yourself. 

You actually fucking growl. “She never misses an opportunity to remind me I’m a fuck up, so excuse me for being skeptical.”

Willow hums, and says, “No, that’s fair.”

Her candor disarms you a bit. “So you’re here because Buffy asked you not to come. So what?”

“And she’s being a pain in the ass about everything.”

“I’m so shocked.” You kill your tequila. “Aren’t you so shocked?”

Willow’s lips quirk. “Shocked.”

“So what do you want me to do about it, huh?”

“I want you to come back.”

You laugh and bite into your lime. “Fuck you. Absolutely not.”

Willow rolls her eyes. “Are you just planning to stay here forever?”

“Fuck, Red. There’s a whole world outside Los Angeles. I don’t ever have to come back if I don’t want to. There’s plenty of creepy crawlies to slay everywhere else, too.”

“Yeah, _alone_.”

“Your point?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of being alone all the time?”

“I’m not alone. I’ve got Juan over there who’s been dying to show me a good time all month. Maybe later I’ll take him out for a spin on his minimum wage wallet.”

Willow seems unimpressed. “If that’s what gets you off.”

“It is.”

“He’s not Buffy.”

“Exactly.”

“Faith, look…” Willow squints. “As much as I hate having to do this whole serious conversation thing with you, because believe me, it makes me feel like the mayor of sucktown, you… well, you have a habit of running away from your problems. It's obvious you miss her.”

“Um, no. I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.” Willow smirks. “Goopy, squishy, puddle on the floor _miss_ her.”

You scoff roughly and signal Juan again.

“I’m serious.” Willow reaches out and grabs your wrist. “Stop pounding drinks for two seconds and listen to me!”

You shrug her off and glower about it, but you do stop. “Fine. What?”

“She misses you, too.”

“She should. I'm great in the sack."

“I’m serious.”

You snort a laugh. “It must kill you to admit it.”

Willow’s expression darkens ominously, then clears again. “Not at all.”

“Creepy.”

“I’ll be here all week. Look, Faith, just come back, okay? Things haven’t been the same since you left.”

“No, I’m sure they’ve been much fucking better.” 

“You really think I’d come all the way over here and beg you come back for shits and giggles?” Willow throws her hands up. “I’m dead serious, okay? The junior slayers ask about you like, every day.”

You huff and roll your eyes. Okay, so you do kind of like the little jerks. It’s really hard not to spoil them. And they’re all so cute and optimistic and unspoiled by the horrors of the world. When you showed off in training they always got these little stars in their eyes like you’re the coolest fucking badass they’ve ever seen. Probably because you fucking are. Buffy’s got moves, but her vibe is way more type A yoga instructor with a secret black belt in karate, which is, you know, cool in its own way. Maybe kinda...attractive. Maybe. You’re not gonna swear an oath on it or anything.

You sigh and pinch the bridge of your nose. You’re not nearly as drunk as you need to be to even have this conversation.

“Do you know why I bailed, Red?”

Willow blinks. “I… no?”

“Do you care?”

Her face remains blank for a few seconds, but then, slowly, she nods and reaches for her beer. You watch her gulp down the rest of it. Behind her head, one of the busboys lights the tiki torch stuck in the sand next to the fence. Night has finally fallen over the island.

You cross your arms. “Well, for starters, I needed a goddamn vacation from that circus in L.A.. You all came after me with pitchforks and torches while conveniently overlooking the fact that it was _Buffy,_ your little martyr, who practically bullied me into sleeping with her.”

Willow’s face remains eerily stoic, but she nods to show she’s listening.

“First she tried to goad me into it, then she called me a slut and tried to manipulate me into it, but I made her ask, because I’m so fuckin’ sick of Buffy’s head games.” You lean back in your chair, legs splayed, picking at your nails. “Once she asked, I gave in. I figured she was in a low place and needed a pick me up. I figured it was just a one time thing and she’d swear me to secrecy and we’d never talk again. It was a win win, you know? I’d finally get to fuck the golden girl, see if all my teenage angst was worth it,” Willow’s eyes widen slightly, “and then we wouldn’t have to freak out about it later. Clean and tidy. The way I like it.”

“Another beer?” Juan asks, swinging by to check in.

Willow nods. “Please.”

“You got it. Oh, and if you’re getting hungry, we’ve got dinner menus, too.”

“Their Greek style tots are killer,” you say, determinedly nonchalant.

Willow chews her lip for half a second of indecision, then looks back at Juan. “We’ll take a double order of Greek tots, please.”

“You got it, babe.”

Juan zooms off in a cloud of Axe body spray and Willow laughs. “He’s something else.”

“Yeah.”

“So, keep going.” She offers you a tiny smile. “I’m listening.”

“Right, sure.” You slouch further into your chair. “Anyway, here I am thinking it’s gonna be a one night stand that Buffy’ll be too embarrassed to ever speak of again, which is easy. No problemo. Except it started happening on regular basis. She started joining me for patrols, trying to make it seem like a casual thing, except afterward she’d drag me into some bar, get liquored up, and ask me to take her somewhere, and…” You hesitate. Willow’s eyes shimmer with genuine curiosity. Your eyes shimmer with something else. “You all were on my case about it, but I...” Your voice cracks and you lick your lips. “It’s not like I didn’t know she was off the fucking rails. I just…”

“Couldn’t quit her?”

You stare at Willow for three whole seconds without coming up with anything witty to say. “Sure. Whatever.”

“We were wrong, you know.” Willow’s eyes dart up toward the palm trees swaying in the breeze overhead. “We're always too quick to blame you.”

You shrug. “It _was_ fucked up. I like rough sex, okay? I do, but that wasn’t just rough, that was… I’m not a demon. I didn’t want to ruin her.”

“You’re not Spike.”

“Yeah, but I was startin’ to think maybe she wanted me to be, and I wigged out. I figured, if I couldn’t say no to her then I had to bounce.”

“Wow, that’s…” Willow blinks as a second bottle of Pacifico is deposited on the table in front of her. “Um, surprisingly mature.”

“Fuck you. I’m very mature.”

“Apparently.” This time, she shoves the lime wedge down into the neck of her bottle with her thumb before taking a sip. “So...what now? Are you gonna stay here? I mean, knowing all that, I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

You look out at the moon, shimmering off the dark waves over the bay. “I’ll come back when I’m ready.”

Willow looks surprised. “Oh. Really?”

“Yeah.” You shrug. “I was planning to anyway.”

“Good.” Willow fidgets in her chair for a moment. “So, uh, you don’t mind if I stay for the tots, do you?”

You shrug. “Nah.”

Willow smiles ruefully. “If you’re not planning to come back soon, maybe I could visit you again sometime?”

“Sure.” You return her smile with one of your own, slyer, a little cagier, but still genuine. “I don’t mind the company actually.”

Willow grins at you and sips from her beer. It feels like a truce.

V v v v v V


	5. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 6.3.17  
> This one's for buffylovesfaith ;)  
> Enjoy!

v.

It’s like some kind of terrible Twilight Zone episode, you being in better shape than Buffy.

You never thought you’d live to see the fucking day.

Actually, you never thought you’d live at all, but what-the-fuck-ever, there’s still plenty of time to go out in a blaze of glory.

You only know about Buffy’s slow motion meltdown in the first place because Willow keeps rocking up out of fucking nowhere just to chat, and it’s unnerving enough trying to adjust to the idea that she doesn’t want to waterboard you in your own blood without also having to wrap your head around the fact that you two might actually be friends now.

“This is a nice spot,” she says pleasantly, offering you a can of organic soda like it’s not weird to appear out of thin air with fucking refreshments. “Did you hike up here by yourself?”

You swat at a couple flies, catching them deftly in your palm, then wiping their pulverized corpses on the trunk of a nearby tree. Willow wrinkles her nose. You roll your eyes.

“Something something, I don’t know my own strength.”

Willow pops the tab of her soda. “No matter how much time I spend around slayers, I never really get used it.”

“We’re a bunch of meatheads.”

“Word.”

You accept the offered soda, tangerine flavor, and drink half of it in a single go. It actually tastes kind of amazing in the mid afternoon heat, all sweet and tangy and shit. The narrow dirt trail meanders off to your right up the side of some lush volcano, but you’re not really all that committed to finishing the hike. Not with Willow gazing out wistfully at the ocean like it’ll offer up the solutions to all of life’s fucking problems. You roll your eyes and crash on a log at the edge of the trail.

“What’s wrong, Red? You’re getting all misty eyed on me.”

She smiles weakly. “Sorry. Just had a fight with Kennedy last night is all.”

“That brat?”

“Yeah.” 

Willow wanders over and joins you on the log, legs crossing under her long denim skirt. You notice she’s wearing backless clogs. You’re not actually sure where she gets her fucking clothes. 

“It’s just that sometimes I forget she’s still technically a teenager,” Willow says.

“Believe me, none of the rest of us do.”

Willow smirks. “She doesn’t do that thing with her tongue to the rest of you.”

“God, I like you so much better this way.” You laugh and kill the rest of your soda. “How long’s it been?”

“Ten months.” Willow plucks at the hem of her flowery tank top. “If we make it a year I’ll be shocked.”

“Looking like that, I’ll be shocked if you don’t start making homemade granola and trying to save the bees.”

Willow blushes. “Bees are important.”

“And granola’s pretty alright. Jeez, I’m just kidding.”

“I love her.”

“Well, yeah. No shit.”

Willow turns to look at you. “You’re surprisingly observant, Faith. You knew all along, didn’t you?”

You shrug, suddenly kind of embarrassed. “Yeah. I guess.”

Willow turns back to the water, shimmering in the distance off the edge of the cliff. “I get it now.”

You roll your eyes. “You’re such a fucking cryptoid. Get what?”

“Sorry, I mean…” her eyes lose their focus for a moment, but you just wait. You’ve learned to do that with her. She gets all flustered when you butt in. “Like…I get what Buffy sees in you, now.”

You sigh angrily. “And we’re back on Buffy.”

She winces. “Sorry.”

“Always Buffy.”

“Sorry!”

“I can’t get a moment’s peace. Not even all the way out here in fucking Hawaii.”

Willow snorts. “Gosh, I said I was sorry. Calm down.”

You wave her off. “Fine. How is Miss America these days?”

Willow grimaces, and that gets your attention, because lately she hasn’t looked more than mildly annoyed with you at any point in time, and now she just looks downright uncomfortable. It’s unusual. 

“She’s um…?” Willow clears her throat. “She’s um, well…”

You deadpan her. “Spit it out, Will. She’s fucking what?”

Willow blanches. “Not what, really, but who.”

“Oh.” You lean back. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So she’s back on the wagon.”

“The sex wagon? Oh yeah.”

You chew your lip for a second. “Well, good for her, I guess. I’m guessing she dropped the rapey-chokey bits?”

Willow fidgets. “I don’t know. She’s getting clever.”

You frown. “What the fuck does that mean? Clever?”

“Like,” Willow’s eyes track off to the side, lingering on a tangle of vines growing over the path, “like better at hiding the stuff she’s up to.”

Your frown turns into an out and out scowl. “She probably wouldn’t feel the need to be so secretive if you guys weren’t such nosy assholes.”

“Yeah, but it’s just weird! At least when you were there she was kind of just flailing around. Now it’s like she’s completely shut down.” Willow gesticulates vigorously. “It’s just like that time-“

“-With the First, yeah. Gosh, well you know what? That time with the First wasn’t that long ago, Red. Like, not even a whole year.”

Willow blinks. “Huh.”

“Yeah. Whaddaya know. Buffy’s got trauma.”

“Well, I guess I just got so used to us handling a crisis every few months that I didn’t realize how absurd our timeline for mental recovery was.”

“Yeah, you’re all nutbags.”

Willow zones out. “Oh my goddess, we are.”

The fact that this is only occurring to her now is as amusing to you as it is irritating. You lift your arms over your head and stretch, smirking at the way Willow side-eyes the slip of skin exposed between your tank top and your tiny little running shorts.

“Stop it, Red. We can’t bang.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Shut up. I don’t want to bang you.”

“Have you checked in with your big gay libido lately, ‘cause my eyes are up here.”

Willow blushes roughly the color of her cinnamon-red hair. “You have nice bone structure.”

“Aw, I bet you say that to all the girls.”

Willow blushes even harder, if that’s even fucking possible, and focuses on trying to drink her soda without choking on her own embarrassment. You love freaking her out. Like, maybe in another universe you’d-

No.

Nope.

Not in any universe.

“So,” you say, with a drawl, “Hawaii’s getting a little old, doncha think?”

Willow shrugs, still redder than a tomato. “I guess.”

You peer up at the sky, a hazy, sapphire blue. “Where should I go to next? Cuba? Taiwan?”

“Taiwan?”

“Yeah, I was thinking something different might be nice. Giles is covering all my travel expenses anyway so I might as well see the world.”

“Wait, Giles is paying for this?’”

“Yeah, I’m not just hanging out getting tanked at the tiki bar, Red. I’m actually here slaying.”

She squints at you. “Had me fooled.”

“The timing of your visits ain’t my problem.”

Willow sighs and kicks at the ground. The sweltering heat of midday seems not to affect her, and you realize, suddenly, that she must’ve used a spell. Being an all powerful witch must be some fucking nice ass shit.

“So you won’t come back to L.A.?” she asks, frowning at the dirt.

“I dunno. What’s the frickin’ rush?”

“It’s been almost two months.”

A colorful bird glides by overhead, and you watch it soar off into the jungle at your back. “And?”

She sags. “Okay.”

You turn to her in surprise. “That’s it? Just ‘okay’? You’re not gonna like, fight me on this?”

Will shrugs. “What good has fighting with you ever done? Even if I magicked you back, you’d find some way to spite me for it.”

Well, credit where credit’s due. She’s got you pinned. 

“Sounds like you’ve already considered that option,” you say.

“Oh yes,” she nods, expression blanking out that freaky way it does when she’s considering powerful magic. “I have.”

You shiver, despite the beads of sweat rolling down your back. “You ever think about it?”

“The power?” Willow’s face remains blank, but she nods, voice even and quiet. “Yes.”

And like, okay, mother of fuck. Why are all your friends tormented edge-lords?

“‘Kay, well don’t.” You pat her shoulder and she jumps under your hand, gaze clearing from its dark fog. “Stop thinking about evil shit or you’ll end up a sex addict like me.”

“Would that be so bad?” Willow gives the sky a confused look.

“Did I mention the crushing guilt? There’s that, too. Like a goddamn kick in the vagina every time you wake up. You don’t want that.”

Willow rolls her eyes. “I skinned a guy, remember? This isn’t my first murder rodeo.”

“I wasn’t aware you actually felt guilty about that.”

The scary expression returns to Willow’s face, and this time you don’t shiver, because yeah, you fucking get it. You’ve hated people before. For a while you were pretty sure you hated Buffy.

“I’m not sure I do,” she says, and her voice is all scratchy and shit, like she just bawled her eyes out about Tara an hour ago.

“Yeah, well, fuck him.” You slap your knees and hop up from the log. “That dickhead killed your girlfriend. He was a shit stain on the world, and nobody’ll miss him.”

Willow stands with a sigh. “Your grip on morality remains tenuous at best.”

“Fuck morality, I don’t waste my pity on people who don’t deserve it. Douchebags like Warren can choke for all I care.”

Willow frowns. “Is that what you thought about yourself, too? Back when you preferred leather pants and murder’?”

You shoot her a grim smile. “Yeah. I’m consistent.”

She moves around to stand in front of you, arms crossed, keen eyes flashing with the zeal of new discovery. She’s just realized something, you can tell, and it chills you. Willow on the trail of a breakthrough is like a dog with fucking bone. You won’t be able to shake her off.

“Wait,” she says, “does that mean you  _ wanted  _ Buffy to kill you?”

You roll your shoulders, gaze sliding away. It’s pretty fucking uncomfortable to acknowledge this to someone other than Angel, especially Buffy’s best friend, who hated you as recently as a few months ago, and who still wasn’t peachy keen on your existence as recently as a few weeks ago. Hell, this’ll be the first time you’ve owned up to another human being. 

(Besides Buffy, who you never really had to tell. She just knew.)

“So, that’s why you didn’t care.” Your gaze flicks back to Willow, who’s practically bouncing in her stupid clogs, gazing up at you like your twisted brain is a world of academic wonders just waiting to be unlocked. “Despite everything you said about being sick of Buffy’s games, you don’t actually care if she was using you. You don’t care if she hurts you. You still feel like you deserve it.”

You flinch away from her. “I think you can fuck back off to L.A. now, Dr. Freud.”

“You left because you thought you were hurting her…” Willow concludes, and it feels like a demon has reached into your chest and wrapped its cold, scaly fingers around your heart.

“Seriously, Red.” Your voice is strained. “Fucking lay off.”

Willow’s wide, curious eyes flick across your stony expression. “Were you hoping she’d forgive you if you let her make it even?”

You take a step back. Then another. You can’t do this with her. You can’t fucking do this. You didn’t fucking sign up for this. Why is everyone trying to pry into your business all the time? Can’t they just leave you the fuck alone? Since when does everyone care so fucking much about Faith the fuckup? It’s not fucking fair for them to jerk you around like this. Do they care about you? Do they hate you? Do they give a single fucking shit about anyone besides themselves and their stupid golden girl?

“Fuck!”

Without warning, you turn and kick the palm tree drooping over the path. Your form is wild and out of control, but you channel all your fury through the heel of your thick-soled hiking boot. The trunk explodes in a shower of wood chips and splinters, fracturing like a sun-bleached bone. Willow squeaks and jumps out of the way in the nick of time. The tree crashes down, sending a cloud of dust billowing up into the air.

“God, Faith!” Her tone is angry, harsh, and familiar.

You smile, sucking down deep breaths as you glare out at the perfect, blue ocean. “Go home, Will.”

She grabs your shoulder and you throw her off, no consideration for your strength or how it might affect her. You feel like a steel trap wound tight and ready to spring, ready to rip through flesh. You feel fucking violent. All this time, and all this work, and you still feel like a psycho bitch with an anger problem. Everything’s still there, right below the surface, right where you fucking left it. You’re always so close to completely losing control.   

“Faith-“

“I said GO HOME!” Your hoarse screams die on the wind. There’s no echo here.

“You’re crying.”

A shiver overtakes you. You’re three fucking seconds from tearing apart another tree, and you feel fucking dangerous. Willow needs to go before this gets out of hand, before you hurt somebody, before-

“Faith, look at me!”

“No, dammit! Just fucking get out of here! Fucking leave!”

Willow’s hand grips your arm, and you try to throw her off again, but you feel weak. Something cool and tingly flows outward from her touch, traveling up your bicep, into your chest. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I got carried away.”

Tears drip onto your bare collar, mingling with sweat and sunscreen. “You had no fucking right!”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

You stagger away, and this time she lets you go, satisfied apparently that you aren’t about to go full Planet of the Apes and tear her head off. As if you could actually hurt a witch. Only one of you would end up in a body bag, and it wouldn’t be Willow.

“Jesus christ.” You rub at your eyes. “Jesus fucking christ. Where do you get off?”

Willow picks up the empty cans of soda, lying on their sides in the dirt. A flick of her wrist sends them off into oblivion. Knowing her, she probably magicked them into some cosmic recycling bin. She’s such a goddamn hippie. How did you end up stuck out here getting your head examined by a fucking hippie?

Willow sighs, returning cautiously to your side. “Do you want me to stop visiting? I-I totally get it if you do, because…well, you know.”

You grit your teeth, but the tears keep coming. You feel pathetic. “I want you to take me to Tokyo. I hate airplanes.”

Willow is silent for a moment. “Tokyo now?”

“Yeah, Tokyo. You got a problem?”

“No!” She holds up her hands. “No problem!”

You turn away from her and wipe your cheeks on the hem of your tank top.

“Here,” she says, “take my hand.”

You eye her suspiciously. “Why?”

“I’ll take you back to your rental so you can pack, and then we’ll get going.”

You nod, just a sharp jut of your chin. “Fine.”

You press your palm against hers, feel the way her fingers close tight around you, and then there’s a roar in your ears and blood rushing to your head, and a blinding barrage of colors flying at you, swirling all around you. You open your mouth to scream, but no sound escapes. You’re in a vacuum. The air leave your lungs with a gasp. There’s no oxygen here. Your eyes feel like balloons about to pop.

And then you land on your feet in a dark bedroom, toes curling into high-pile carpet, so dizzy you could hurl.

“Sorry,” Willow lifts your chin to examine your eyes, “it’s rough the first dozen times or so.”

“D-dozen?”

“Yeah. Maybe more. It depends.” She smiles cheerfully, and moves away. “Where’s your suitcase? I can pack your stuff with my witch-fu if you want.”

You breathe in deeply and brace your hands on your hips. “Don’t you need to recharge?”

She shrugs. “I’ll probably have to spend a day in Tokyo, yes. It’s taxing enough moving myself, but moving two people is…mm. Tricky.”

“Don’t say tricky. You’re making me anxious.”

Willow smirks at you through the gloom. “You could always take a plane.”

“And spent ten hours crammed in next to an asshole trying to stare down my top? No thanks.”

“The obvious solution to that is to wear something modest, you know.”

“Who the fuck asked you?”

She sighs and moves to sit on the bed. It’s unkempt and covered with clothes. You haven’t made an effort to keep things organized. She kicks at an empty beer bottle on the floor.

“Are you sure you won’t come back to L.A. with me?”

You scowl. Your head fucking hurts and you’re in a wicked bad mood. “Haven’t you figured out yet that me and B being in the same damn place is a bad idea? We’re a fucking car wreck okay?”

Willow nods, and the amount of understanding on her face is disconcerting. “It kind of is, yeah, but I’m afraid it’s only worse when you two let things fester like this. And…you’re kind of the only person who seemed able to get through to her at all. She won’t talk to anyone else.”

“If she doesn’t want to talk, leave her in fucking peace. Jesus. Y’all need to manage your own shit for once instead of constantly prying into her business.”

“I don’t think being left alone is what she needs right now.”

“Yeah, well who asked you?”

Willow’s mouth opens and shuts like a guppy. “Um. I’m her best friend? Or did you forget?”

“I didn’t forget a damn thing. Buffy wants time to work out her crap on her own. Give her some space!”

Willow’s hands curl into fists. “She doesn’t need space, Faith, she needs you!”

A bomb explodes in your chest. “NO SHE FUCKING DOESN’T! ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?! ARE YOU THAT FUCKING DENSE?! HAVE YOU HEARD A SINGLE FUCKING THING I’VE SAID?!”

Willow recoils, a scowl overriding the pity on her face. “You’re getting to Tokyo on your own. I’m not dealing with this crap right now.”

“Yes! Finally!” You throw up your hands. “Fucking go! Fucking leave me in peace! Fix your own shitty relationship and stay out of everyone else’s business for once in your miserable life!”

Her eyes narrow into dark slits. “Fuck you, Faith. I was only trying to help.”

“Well stop, you’re making it worse.”

Willow’s lips press into a thin, hard line, and then, with a only faint crack, she’s gone, vanished just as suddenly as she appeared.

You exhale, shoulders sagging, suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. You don’t really feel like going to Tokyo anymore. You don’t really feel like doing anything. You find a beer in the fridge and crash in front of the TV, staring at cooking shows until the sun goes down and it’s time to go patrol.

The next morning you look up tickets to Thailand and catch a red eye flight out the same night. You figure a new country will clear your head, somewhere even more exotic that reminds you even less of Buffy and her idiot friends.

Two weeks later, on a pristine beach in Pattaya, you squint at a sunset through the glass of a half-drained whiskey bottle and try to remember the exact shade of Buffy’s blonde hair. There are moments, between slaying, drinking, and fucking, when you feel a little bit guilty, when Willow’s words come seeping up through the cracks in your mind, but you’ve got a girl on your arm, and a baggie of MDMA in your pocket, and the night promises the kind of sinful delights you could only ever dream of before.

You try not to think about Buffy anymore.

Willow doesn’t visit again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: leave a note! yell at me about how ready you are for these two to finally get their shit together ;)
> 
> thanks for reading


	6. Buffy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3.5.18
> 
> Before anyone asks, no this does not mean I'm back from hiatus. Consider it a sick day gift from me to all of you <3
> 
> ~Enjoy!

**vi.**

Four months of therapy.

Four torturous months of therapy.

It turns out you have issues. Which like, duh. You fight the evil undead? Of course you have issues? It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out, much less a psych degree for that matter, but whatever. Turns out it’s not a complete waste of time. Maybe you kind of, sort of, underestimated how bad your issues were. And maybe you kind of, sort of didn’t take them all that seriously. And maybe you kind of, sort of laughed them off in that “aren’t scars cool?” sort of way.

Until now. Because now your issues are Big Ones. Big Issues. All caps, underlined and circled.

Not the kind guys in fedoras whine about over pianos. The _major league_ kind. The _keep you up at night_ kind. The _$275 an hour_ kind. You’ve never heard anything from the mouth of an earnest singer-songwriter that can begin to hold a candle to your flaming baggage heap of trauma, and you don’t even have to make a list to prove your case, because the first bullet point alone would populate the lyrics of an entire country album.

Case in point: How many other teenagers have stabbed their evil demon boyfriends through the heart to save the world? Oh yeah! Zero.

But _you_ have. And a year later you gutted your sister slayer with her own knife because she tried to take him from you again. There just isn’t enough therapy in the world to erase that one. You’d let Faith return the favor if it would fix it. You might be willing to let her anyway, just to see if it might.

But okay, so you have issues. Now what?

You’re Buffy Summers. You’re the Chosen One. You’re spunky. You’re embattled.

You’re also _certifiable_.

You don’t need a little piece of paper to tell you that, except now you’ve got one; a prescription folded up in the bottom of your purse, a little something extra to get you out of bed in the morning, like a bird pecking at the window. You’ve got a real prescription now, and that makes all of it disconcertingly official.

Like, maybe it’s not just a funk? Maybe it’s more than a phase? Maybe your friends aren’t overreacting?

This new diagnosis, uttered quietly in a therapist’s office, has more life now than you’ve had in months. You feel broken. Like maybe you’ve been shattered and glued back together too many times. Maybe you can’t hold water anymore. Maybe you're nothing but a bad luck charm wrapped in a pretty blonde package.

That’s what you’ve been trying to tell the beautiful woman in front of you for the last five minutes, but it’s hard when your tongue is so heavy.

“Hey, we’ve all been there,” she says amicably. “No worries.”

You blink at her dumbly. That was your last card to play, and you’re good, but you’re not Houdini. You’re way too drunk to come up with another excuse. There’s a bruise on your kneecap that’s _still_ throbbing, even with half a liter of vodka in your system, and you might’ve cracked a rib on a park bench during an impromptu altercation with a demon. It’s hard to tell, really. Your chest is so tight anyway these days. It kind of always hurts to breathe.

You make a face, one of your signature little pouty, wrinkled expressions, and she laughs. The sound fills your ears and trickles down the back of your throat. It makes your palms sweat. She has brown hair, brown skin and brown eyes, a long, lanky body in black jeans with the knees ripped out, leather boots, and a motorcycle jacket, and now you’ve learned two things about yourself today.

  1. You have Big Issues
  2. You have a type



The room tilts gently to the right. You must tilt with it a bit because the woman catches your arm, and her expression shifts. She looks amused. It makes you feel petulant. You get the urge to smear your sweaty palm across her bright red lipstick. Doesn’t she know you can do a quadruple backflip from a dead stop?

"Why don't you come sit down," she says, and makes an attempt to guide you away from the bar, but your bleary mind resists, and so, for a few seconds, she tugs uselessly at your arm while you try not to giggle. Her amusement becomes cute, brow-furrowed confusion.

"You sure are strong for your size, chica."

You stare at her mouth as she speaks. Are you being a perv? You don't know how to do this, how the game works with girls. Her lips are plump, crimson pillows that pucker when she's checking you out. She reminds you of Faith, if Faith were a Latina who liked winged eyeliner and a fuller brow. And was also tall. Like actually tall. Not the couple extra inches she has on you now, which don't really count anyway because you always wear heels.

"Did you drive here?" you ask, over the noise, leaning into her space. "Not that it really matters how you got here as long as you have somewhere to go back to.”

She quirks a brow, but hold onto your confidence, and you can see the flicker in her eyes the moment she decides to take the bait. Maybe girls aren’t so different after all. Maybe there was never any secret to it in the first place and all you really needed on your side were good looks and a reckless disregard for the consequences.

You sway a bit on your heels as she leans down and pecks you chastely on the lips. Her warmth makes your heart race.

“For the record,” she says, “my name is Isabella, but I’ll let you call me Isa if you buy me another drink before we go.”

You lick your lips. “I’ll buy you two if you tell me what hair products you use.”

“Deal,” she says, and kisses you firmly.

You inhale sharply through your nose. She tastes different than you expected. Like sour citrus and bitter tonic. No smoke. No cinnamon. It’s not quite… It’s just different.

You buy her some shots for the road.

Isa takes you to a Marriott in an taxi and tugs you into an elevator with too-bright lights and mirror-panelled doors. There’s sweat glistening in the hollows of your collar bones and your hair is mussed. Your makeup is bleeding around the edges. You probably look like you’ve been fucked already, but at least you wear it well. Isa’s hands seem to think so. They slip up and down your shimmery silver dress, palming and pinching. You slot your ass between her hips, and when she moans in your ear your skin prickles all over.

Her room is dimly lit when you get in, cool from the air conditioning and facing the boulevard. You let her suck on your neck while she strips off your dress, and your head lolling back against her shoulder feels like a trust-fall backwards off a fifty foot diving board, because you aren’t thinking about anything anymore. You’ve spread your arms against the wind. It’s a slow motion plane crash. The water will break your fall. It doesn’t matter.

She touches you too gently and you pull her hair until she gets the memo.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she murmurs. Her mouth is on your stomach. Her hands are mapping your thighs.

“You won’t,” you promise, and close your eyes. “You can’t.”

“Just let me know if I get too rough,” she says, and her warm tongue licks away your complaints.

It’s the last full sentence you ever hear her speak.

In the morning, you catch a taxi to the other side of town, and Kennedy finds you slumped over a metal prep table in Hotel Hyperion’s industrial kitchen at half past eight. You pulled a discarded baggy sweater from the lobby over your wrinkled dress, and there’s a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios turning to mush next to your head. You wiped most of your makeup away on a wad of toilet paper before you left Isa’s hotel room, but it didn’t do much good. You look like a celebrity mugshot.

“Hey, Buff.” Kennedy leans against the counter beside you. “You’re up early.”

You exhale, inadvertently blowing a clump of frizzy hair off your face. The metal is cool on your clammy forehead and you’re not sure yet whether eating that cereal was a mistake. Opening your mouth to speak is a risk you’re not sure you want to take.

“I never really went to bed,” you grumble through your teeth.

“So you decided to sleep on the table?”

“Go ‘way.”

“Some of the girls are coming down to make pancakes. They’re gonna see you looking like a racoon.”

“I don’ care.”

“I think you will-”

You interrupt her with a long, inarticulate stream of grumbling and lift your head up off the table. The room spins a bit. Thank god for slayer healing or else you’d be comatose in a bathtub. You blink, blearily, into the bright, fluorescent light.

“Let’s go back upstairs,” Kennedy says, with tiny smirk. “Willow’s got a tonic for hangovers.”

“I don’t wanna see Willow.”

“Tough,” she says.

She lifts you up off your stool, bridal-style, and carries you squawking into the dining room where Giles glances up from his morning paper at a sunlit table in the corner. His blue oxford shirt is crisp as ever, and his slim, navy blue jeans are pressed. The swirling amber frames of his new tortoise shell glasses catch the light like honeycomb. He dresses the way your father used to on Saturdays, a long time ago in another life.

“Burning the candle at both ends, Buffy?” he asks, lightly.

“I left my shoes around here somewhere,” you mutter, chagrined, shoving insistently at Kennedy’s shoulder. “Put me down, already.”

“They’re in the lobby,” she says. “Worry about it later.” Her grip on your body tightens as you try to wriggle out of her hold. “Morning, Giles.”

“Good morning.” He returns blithely to his paper. “See that she gets some rest, please. And have Willow brief her on that thing we talked about.”

“What thing?” you ask. “Kennedy, god, put me down!”

“Not unless you can walk. Can you walk?”

You consider the spinning room and the roiling nausea sitting like a promise in the back of your throat. “...Uhhh.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” Kennedy hoists you up a bit. “Let’s go.”

Willow answers her door in a fuzzy orange bathrobe. Her hair is wet from the shower, and she’s still wringing it out in a towel as she takes in the sight of you. You don’t know what’s worse, the exasperated look on your best friend’s face, or the fact that she’s not at all surprised to see you in her girlfriend’s arms.

The irate quirk of her eyebrow says it all.

“The benders have to stop,” Willow says, as Kennedy lays you down on the bed. “You can’t be the mope lord of bad-decision town forever.”

Kennedy snickers. “Mope lord…”

“It was the first thing that came to mind,” Willow says, sheepish. “Not my best work, I’ll admit.”

“No, babe it’s funny.”

“Towns don’t have lords,” you grumble, sprawled on your back. “They have mayors. I’m a mope mayor.”

“Mope mayor,” Kennedy snorts. “Even better.”

Willow rummages around in her nightstand. The hem of your short dress is hiked up around your thighs and you catch Kennedy stealing glances. A murderous glare earns you nothing but an amused shrug.

“Did you take any drugs?” Willow asks, setting a rope of garlic on the bedspread.

“No,” you snipe, because _really_. “Do I seem like the drug taking type to you?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Willow responds, waspishly, “you didn’t seem like the 30 day bender type to me either, but evidently that’s changed, so who knows?”

And okay, ouch? It stings, even if it’s true.

She continues in a singsong voice. “What fun new hobbies will you take up next, I wonder?” Something clatters in the nightstand and Willow emerges holding a little green bottle of liquid. “Did you at least use a condom this time? We don’t need a repeat of last month.”

“No condoms required, Will, but thanks so much for your concern.”

Willow takes a moment to process that. Slouched in the armchair across the room, Kennedy’s eyes widen. You watch as their gazes connect. Realization dawns on Willow’s face.

“Wait. You mean…?”

“Two’s a pattern,” Kennedy says, smirking. “Bisexual Buffy, mope mayor of bad decision town.”

You roll your eyes. “Do I get a t-shirt?”

“Drink this.” Willow hands you the green bottle. “And don’t you dare complain about the taste. It’s the last of my supply, and that stuff is expensive to make.”

You uncap it and toss it back in one go. It burns worse than plastic bottle vodka, like black pepper and fire, but you hold back all your whining like a champ. Willow goes into the bathroom and returns with a glass of water.

“I’m going to give you a sleeping draught,” she says, and sits at the edge of the bed. “Giles wants you rested for tonight.”

You close your eyes. There’s a curious tingling sensation emanating from your stomach.

“Why?” you croak. “What’s tonight?”

“We’re going on a pickup.”

“Wait, what?” you crack an eyelid. “A pickup?”

“More or less,” Willow says.  

“Where?”

“Ulaanbaatar.”

You blink your eyes open. “Um, rewind. Was that a real word you just said?”

“It’s the capital of Mongolia.”

You stare at her. “Okay, I obviously missed that day in geography class. What the heck’s in Ulaanbaatar?”

Willow glances at Kennedy. “A new slayer, we think.”

“Um, yeah, but who? Because like, I’m sure there are lots of new slayers popping up, but you don’t see me zapping off to Siberia to give them The Speech.”

“Uhh-”

“-Willow. Who.” She winces, and looks a tiny bit furtive, and there’s a swooping sensation in your gut that’s all too familiar. “Oh. Oh, no. No. No way.”

“Faith was supposed to pick her up, but she never showed.”

“Oh, so now I’m back to cleaning up her messes? Gee that was fast!”

“I know you guys didn’t exactly leave things on great terms, but-”

You struggle upright, dizzy and angry. “-We didn’t leave things on any terms, Will! She left without telling anyone!”

“I agree that it sucked, but she had her reasons.”

It takes you a couple seconds to process Willow’s words, and you blink at each other in mutual surprise for a moment. Across the room, Kennedy noisily flips the page of a magazine.

“...Will,” you say slowly, “is there something you aren’t telling me?”

Willow manages to look annoyed and apologetic all at once. “Kind of a lot.”

“Spill. Right now.”

“Another time,” she says, eyes sliding off to one side. “Right now you need to get some sleep.”

You groan and flop back against the bed. “Why can’t you guys just take one of the other girls?”

Willow pats your shin. “It’s your turn to give The Speech. Plus Giles thinks you need some fresh mountain air. His words, not mine.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” you grumble.

“That’s the spirit,” Kennedy says.

“It’ll be good,” Willow adds. “This’ll give you a chance to get out of L.A..”

You know she’s probably right, but you’re not looking forward to it.

“What do people even wear in Ulaanbaatar?” you murmur. “How am I supposed to dress for that environment? I don’t own a single yak pelt.”

Willow reclines on the pillows beside you and strokes your hair with soft, clean fingers. “Don’t worry, Buff. I’m sure your elk pelt will be fine.”

“I can always count on you, Will. Thanks.”

“No problem.” She presses a small bottle into your hand. “Now drink up, sleeping beauty. You’ve got a busy night ahead of you.”

“I’ll wear my fur boots,” you announce, as you uncap it.

“I’d go for something rubber,” Willow says, with a wrinkled nose, and supervises closely to make sure you drink down all of your sleeping draught.

V v v v v V


	7. Buffy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4.5.18  
> I would like to say, for the record, that I don't share Buffy's views on Mongolia and would very much like to visit there someday.  
> Enjoy~

**vii. Mongolia, pt. 1**

“I never said she was actually, like, _good_ for me,” you say. “Just that she let me be whatever I felt like being. It was like that.”

The beam of Willow’s flashlight bounces along a packed earthen road, flicking periodically between the uneven wooden fences on either side. The neighborhood you’ve been walking through is a haphazard residential extension of Ulaanbaatar’s inner city, a mix of traditional yurts and colorful little houses built into the gently sloping hillside. The stench of livestock is powerful to your sensitive nose, even in such cold weather. You can hear the bells of restless sheep and the quiet chattering of sleepy chickens in their roosts. Your boots scrape over a frozen pile of horse dung. Permafrost has made the ground hard like cement, and the evidence of a recent snow storm is piled up against the fences in fluffy white drifts. A clear sky of bright stars blinks down from overhead. There’s no moon over the Mongolian steppe tonight.

“That counts as good in my book,” Willow replies, with a shrug.

“Yeah well, whatever. She’s a girl, anyway.”

Willow rolls her eyes. “Because that seemed to matter _so much_ when you were sleeping with her.”

“I _care_ about her, Will. I’m not _in love_ with her.”

“I care about Xander,” she retorts, “but you don’t see me tripping over myself to sleep with him.”

You grimace, because first of all, god, that image is gross. And second of all, is she really being this willfully obtuse? Just because Willow and Faith had a few clandestine heart to hearts in Hawaii doesn’t mean she’s like, got your head all figured out. Your relationship with Faith was complicated. It’s _still_ complicated. You don’t even understand it yourself most of the time.

“Look,” you say, forcing the thought of Xander and Willow out of your head, “just because I”m having sex with someone doesn’t mean I want soft morning cuddles and a golden retriever, okay? It’s just sex. Stop reading into it so much.”

Willow sighs irritably. “Yeah, okay, fine.”

“I’m just saying! It wasn’t going to last! It was an arrangement, and we were both perfectly happy with things staying the way they were.”

“The lady doth protest too much,” Willow snipes, airily.

Frustration fills you to bursting. “Do you even know where we’re going right now?”

Willow pats her chest, where a charmed, hawk bone talisman rests on a cord under her heavy parka. “Sort of. I’m kind of winging it.”

“Well, can you wing it a little faster? I think my nose is gonna fall off.”

Willow reaches over with one hand, hardly breaking stride, and tugs your wool buff up over your face. “There. All better.”

“No, not better! My nipples are as hard as diamonds!”

Willow snorts. “Oh my god. I told you to layer.”

“Will, come on.” You grab her sleeve and drag her to a stop. “Why are we doing this? Why am I even here right now?”

Willow rolls her eyes in the dark. This far from the city lights, the winding dirt roads are only sporadically illuminated and there are large stretches of deep shadow. The sound of a family eating dinner reaches your ears, sizzling meat on a grill, a television playing, children giggling, adults talking. You’re half tempted to go introduce yourself and see if they’ll let you in out of the cold.

“I told you already,” Willow says, yanking her sleeve back. “Giles thinks you need a change of scenery.”

You throw up your hands. “Why couldn’t I have had a change of scenery in Paris?”

“Because Paris is covered,” Willow says testily.

“Okay, so what about Barcelona? Or London? Or Rome? Or literally anywhere that isn’t here?! What the hell am I doing here, Will? You know how I feel about the cold!”

“Because you’d probably just get drunk in Paris, or London, or Barcelona!” Willow snaps. “And everyone seems to agree you could use a break from being drunk!”

“So, what? You bring me to a frozen wasteland where I can’t get into any trouble? Was that your genius plan?”

“Yes!” Willow snaps, eyes flaring. “So sorry I wanted to spend a little time with you sober, Buffy! I have no idea where you go or what you do anymore, and I fucking miss you, okay?!”

A lump forms in your throat. You find yourself suddenly speechless.

Willow rubs at her temples, eyes brimming with tears. “Let’s just-… Let’s just get this over with and get out of here. This was a bad idea.”

She stomps off into the darkness, and, after a few seconds of steady breathing, you follow after her.

The rest of your search is undertaken in silence.

“I think this is it,” she says, nearly twenty minutes later, coming to a stop outside a rusty metal gate.

The gate is set into a modest stone wall made of grey cinder blocks. Through it you can see the shapes of two large yurts, wrapped in pale, woolen felt and bound with cords. Light from inside glows through thinner sections around their roof peaks.

“Which one?” you ask, at a loss.

Willow bites her lip as she thinks. “…The left one.”

You pop the padlock with one hand. The gate squeaks as you push it open, drawing the attention of the people inside. Murmuring voices give way to sharp whispers. The wooden door swings opens and a man steps out holding a lantern and a rifle. His head is bare and he’s missing a coat. He’s obviously come out in a hurry.”

Willow touches glowing fingers to her ears and throat as he begins to speak. His features are narrowed in suspicion, but the rifle stays where it is, held loosely by the barrel. They exchange words you can’t understand for a couple minutes, the tension between them rising continuously until it suddenly dissipates, giving way like a crumbling bridge.

“He says we can come in,” Willow says quietly, turning to you. “His daughter accidentally killed a neighbor’s yak last week and they’re in trouble with the police.”

“Tell him we’ll pay the fines.”

“Already did,” Willow replies, starting toward the door. “C’mon.”

The interior of the yurt is far roomier than you’d expected. Slender beams of wood, painted orange to brighten the space, fan out around two center poles supporting a peaked, white roof. The walls, shaped with a circular lattice of interlocking poles, are decorated intermittently with woven rugs, prints, and framed pictures. The floor underneath is covered with worn, herringbone hardwood. Three beds, draped with more rugs and piled with colorful blankets, are pushed up against opposite walls, bookending a small kitchen space and refrigerator. The center of the room is dominated by an old stove, and beside it, seated on cushions around a low wooden table cluttered with dishes of food, is a family.

You stare back at the four sets of eyes peering up at you. There’s a wrinkled, grandmotherly woman in a traditional, green, winter dress, a young boy in a superman sweatshirt and track pants, a mother in black trousers and a purple fleece, and finally, the reason for your visit: a whip-thin teenage girl in jeans and knit blue sweater. Her long, black hair is tied up in twin braids that trail all the way down her front, and her eyes are a striking gray.

“Um, hi,” you say, waving awkwardly.

“I’ll give the speech,” Willows mutters. “You do the demonstrations.”

You nod stiffly. Experience has taught you both this is for the best.

Willow converses with the two parents a bit, helping you pronounce their names correctly and making small talk as they putter about the space, preparing to feed you. You sit cross-legged on a blue, tassled cushion that the father, Batu, brings to you, and, at his urging, scooch closer to the table. The scent of smoked meat fills your nose. The mother, Geriel, rustles around in the fridge, returning with a jug and a pair of small wooden bowls. She fills each with a milky liquid and sets one in front of you.

“We’re supposed to drink this,” Willow says, nudging your shoulder. “They’re showing us hospitality.”

You fight the urge to wrinkle your nose at the odd smell. “What is it?”

“Um…” Willow frowns, then directs a question at Geriel. “Oh… It’s called Airag.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“It’s fermented mare’s milk.”

Your stomach turns over uncomfortably. “I think I’ll pass, thanks.”

Willow elbows you hard in the ribs. “Don’t be rude. You’ve had worse.”

She’s right about that. Willow’s tonics are like, terrible.

You lift the bowl and put it to your lips before you can think better of it. The liquid is somewhat sour and effervescent, and your tongue detects the unmistakable tang of alcohol. You fight back a shudder.

“Kinda like fuzzy yogurt,” Willow remarks curiously, and takes another sip.

You frown into your bowl. “I think I prefer mine peach flavored.”

“And this is why I do the talking,” Willow says. “We’ve got enough convincing to do tonight without a diplomatic crisis on our hands.”

“Hey, I make with the stabby, not the gabby.”

“Sometimes I just wish you could do _two_ things instead of one.” Willow rolls her eyes with theatrical dismay, and you give her an annoyed little shove. “Well, at least you’re good at the stabby part. We might need it later.”

You regard her through narrowed eyes, about to ask her whether she expects to run into Mongolian vampires or something, when Geriel scoots a platter of smoked lamb and noodles in front of you. The question is momentarily forgotten in lieu of warm food. Willow reaches out with her fork straight away and samples a large bite.

“Good,” she mumbles, nodding, then smiles at the family and translates her approval.

You chance another sip of your airag, wondering at the alcohol content, before reaching out to follow suit. The food, unlike the strange drink, is immediately delicious.

As you eat, Willow starts to talk more seriously with the family. You’ve heard The Speech enough times that you can follow along with the flow of things, even in another language. She gestures for dramatic effect where necessary, and adopts a serious tone to describe the sacred duties of slaying. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. It’s not as if you listened all that closely the _first time._ You zone out a bit, eating steadily from the platters of food Geriel keeps scooting in front of you, content to indulge your slayer metabolism. It’s funny to think about all that’s changed, and all that hasn’t. You’ll actually admit to your superhuman appetite now, even if you still don’t pay attention to the boring monologues that seem to be a regular staple of your job.

You’re halfway through a rather garlicky beef and vegetable dumpling when the father, Batu, suddenly raises his voice.

You lift your head. “What’s wrong?”

“He doesn’t want his daughter to go away,” Willow murmurs, looking pained. “He was rather, um…emphatic about that.”

“Tell him about the risks. She’ll be safer with us.”  

Willow glances sidelong at you. “Probably best not to upset him even more, Buff.”

You notice the grandmother’s unnerving glare from across the table. “Ah.”

“Yep.”

“This is why I let you do all the strategery.”

“Yeah,” Willow snorts. “ _Let_.”

“Shut up.”

You look to your left to gage the reaction of the girl and inadvertently make eye contact with her. Her gaze is fleeting, but her expression is calm and controlled. She’s strong. You can tell at a glance.

“What’s your name?” you blurt, on impulse.

Willow translates quickly and girl responds, “Erhi.”

You nod and point at yourself. “I’m Buffy.”

“Buffy,” she nods.

“Nice to meet you, Ehri. I’m the head slayer.”

Willow translates again, and Erhi’s eyes widen imperceptibly. Tension spikes around the table. Batu stares at you and gestures, making a rather sharp comment.

“He doesn’t think you look like a boss,” Willow says, sidelong.

“Well, that’s just sexist.” You jump to your feet, and the adults recoil in fear. “Maybe I should give him a little demonstration?”

“I don’t know if that’s such a-“

“-I could lift something. Maybe the stove?”

Willow glares at you. “Yeah no.”

You blink innocently at her. “No?”

“Terrible idea.”

“Well, what’s your grand idea then, Diplomat Willow? Kill another yak?”

“Chill, Kujo.” Willow gives you a deadpans stare. “I’ll ask him if he wants to see a demonstration.”

As it turns out, Batu _does_ want to see a demonstration, and that’s how, five minutes later, you, Willow, and the whole family end up out in the yard. You’re a bit warmer with all the food in you, but it makes little difference when the temperature outside is approaching zero. There are more yurts out here than you’d initially seen from the gate, two smaller ones at the back of the yard making four in total. A little herd of sheep sleep piled up together in a pen in the corner, and there’s a house for chickens as well. Willow stares at a half-submerged bicycle sticking out of a small, frozen pond as Batu explains something to her. Both kids look on curiously with their mother and grandmother.

“So, it looks like Nugai here-“ Willow gestures at the boy, “-accidentally rode his bike into the pond on a warm day and it got stuck in the ice.” She turns to look at you. “He wants you to pull it out.”

“That’s all?” You blink. “Isn’t that a little too easy?”

“Just try not to break it, please.”

You roll your eyes. “Is this the part where you tell me I don’t know my own strength?”

“Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time!”

“I replaced that mug, okay? I’m sorry!”

Willow crosses her arms. “That mug was handmade. I got it at the craft sale at UCS. It was irreplaceable.”

You grumble and step forward, eager to avoid a repeat of this argument. It takes a few seconds to venture out onto the slippery ice and to secure a firm grip on the center shaft of the bike. A test tug confirms what you already suspected. It’ll break into pieces if you try to rip it out straight away.

Batu gives you a smug look.

Asshole.

You use your heel to smash a loose circle all around the bike and easily yank it free of the pond, still encased in a boulder-sized chunk of ice. Batu’s eyes go wide. You decide to make a show of it, lifting the bike over your head and balancing it on a gloved pointer finger.

“Satisfied?” you ask, feeling smug.

Willow smiles in spite of herself. “Show off.”

You return her smile easily. “Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.”

Deciding you’ve more than made your point, you toss the ice-crusted bike up into the air and catch it in one hand, lowering it carefully onto the snowy ground. Nugai, the boy, makes like he’s going to run at it, but his grandmother catches him by the collar and drags him back inside. Gerial, Batu, and Ehri remain, whispering earnestly amongst themselves in a tight little circle.

You bump Willow with your shoulder and she bumps back.  

“Thanks.”

She quirks a brow. “For what?”

“Oh, you know.” You link your arm through hers. “Don’t make me say it.”

Willow’s response is interrupted by Geriel gesturing to you, and this time Willow touches your ears with glowing fingers. When Geriel speaks, you can actually understand her.

“You and my daughter really are the same,” she says, wide eyed, “if this is a blessing, it’s one I don’t understand, but who am I to question the will of the gods?”

“There’s a lot we still don’t understand about it,” you start to say, but fumble to a stop when she looks lost.

“I didn’t translate your speech,” Willow explains.

You frown at her. “If you could’ve done this the whole time, why didn’t you?”

She rubs sheepishly at the back of her fur-lined ushanka hat. “I was mad at you.” Before you can respond, Willow turns to Geriel and translates what you’ve said.

“I was worried when the first one came,” Geriel says, after a breath. “There was a dark aura around her. I didn’t trust her with my daughter, but you aren’t like her at all.”

Your eyes widen with alarm as Willow asks, “what other?”

“The girl with dark hair and eyes,” Geriel says. “Faith.”

V v v v v V

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on tumblr @ aeschylusrex !


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